The Luminist

It happened in the Quiet Car. That's my happy place on the Acela Train — library-level voices only, peace and quiet with a view. On the ride from DC to NYC, I typically stare out the window taking in five-second glimpses of other people's lives. Run-down row houses in Baltimore. Power plants in Delaware. Above-ground pools in New Jersey.

But this trip, I was heads-down in a book when we pulled into Penn Station's darkness. The conductor's voice boomed through my trance. I flailed around grabbing bags — tote bag, roller bag, trash bag. I snatched up my crossbody bag that had fallen to the floor, surprised to find the zipper open. Whatever, no time! I thought. And so I slung it over my shoulder without registering its lighter weight.

Hours later, my missing sunglasses were my first first clue.

Wait. If I lost those, what else is missing?

I rummaged through the yellow lining of the tiny black bag.

Ah, nuts.

No car key.

I texted Kendall immediately: I lost my damn car key.

She texted back: Ah, that sucks. Ok, I grabbed the spare from the junk drawer, I'll put it in my bag right now and bring it with me when I meet you up there tomorrow.

Crisis averted, right? But I still felt stupid. Embarrassed. Annoyed about having to plop down a stack of cash for my carelessness.

I'm an expert in loss. Shouldn't this be no big deal?

Nope. Not even loss experts are immune to feeling like idiots.

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The requisite pity party.

When I got to my hotel, I confirmed nothing else was missing and then flopped face-first onto the bed like a teenager who'd just been grounded. The soft cotton sheets smelled like expensive laundry detergent, which made feeling sorry for myself feel even more ridiculous.

On the inside of my eye lids, I replayed the train scene. How did I not notice the bag felt lighter? Why didn't I check the zipper? What kind of dummy loses a car key in 2025?

Ten self-pitying minutes later, I rolled over and FaceTimed Kendall.

"Hey mom, I got the car key!” She dangled the fob in front of the camera.

“Thank you, sweetie. But god, I’m such an idiot!”

"Mom." She gave me that look — the one she somehow mastered at three years old — that promises a loving b***h slap. "You realize this happens to literally everyone, right? Like, constantly. Remember when both Connor and I lost your credit card one semester? Did you tell us we were stupid?"

"No, of course not."

"Right. Because mistakes happen. You always say that." She leaned closer to the camera. "So why are you being meaner to yourself than you'd be to a stranger?"

I didn't have a good answer for that.

"Look, you lost a thing. It sucks, but it doesn’t mean you’re worthless. Next week, we’ll get a new key and forget this even happened."

Hanging up, I realized she was right. I'd been so busy beating myself up that I'd forgotten the obvious: this stuff happens to everyone. As much as we hope, pray, DREAM that we’ll outgrow these silly little mistakes, we don’t. We’re spacey young adults, then we graduate into being exhausted parents and hyper-focused managers and execs. Then by the time our kids fly the coop, our careers sunset, and we have a moment to breathe again, we’re back to being a little spacey. And truth be told, we have better ways to spend our time than being absolutely perfect at keeping track of our belongings.

Time to get off this bed and rejoin the human race.

Walking it off.

An hour later, I was wandering through Manhattan with no particular destination. Something about moving my body always helps my brain stop spinning in circles, and the endless sights, sounds, and smells of NYC just makes it easier.

Past the Flatiron Building. Through Union Square. Down streets lined with bookstores and coffee shops and the kind of small businesses that make you believe in humanity.

As I walked, I considered the inception point of my meltdown. Somewhere deep down, I believed I should be smart enough to prevent Every Single Mistake. Like I'm some extra-super version of Superwoman who can also predict the future.

I sighed as I rounded the corner onto Broadway, heading back to Penn Station.

We have as much chance of successfully predicting (and avoiding) all mistakes as we have of learning to fly. Focusing on this pipe dream will drive any person mad. A much better use of our energy is getting good at what comes after.

Mistake-recovery over mistake-prevention.

My pace slowed as the pieces clicked into place. All we can do is own the mistake, fix what you can, and don't be a jerk to yourself about it in the process. Nobody benefits from you walking around like a wounded, grumpy bear all day.

By the time I reached the Amtrak information desk, I'd walked off my self-attack spiral. I approached the man in the red and grey vest with a sheepish smile. After my monologue explaining my snafu, he said, "these things happen," with such kindness that I almost teared up. He then directed me to the lost and found, where yet another helpful human gave me detailed instructions about how to file a claim, where to check its status, and where to call back in a week.

Walking out of the lost and found office, I felt something I'd forgotten in my fumbling-with-bags panic: grace.

If I could extend myself even half the compassion these strangers had shown me, this day didn't have to be a total wash.

I was so lost in this revelation that I almost walked right past the tall man with the black backpack.

Serendipity, you scoundrel.

I did a double take. The man looked familiar. Not a movie star… Not someone from my corporate life…

Holy s**t! It was Dr. George Bonanno, my favorite resilience researcher! (Yes, I have one of those.)

I've been drafting Do Loss for six months and his work is everywhere in it. My favorite quote of his, "resilience is our default mode" has profoundly influenced my writing and my life.

"Dr. Bonanno?" I said quietly enough that if it wasn’t him, it wouldn’t be too weird.

He turned, the mild confusion on his face indicating he was likely expecting a student, and wasn’t sure what to do upon seeing a middle-aged woman with a crossbody bag instead.

I stuck out my hand. "I write about loss and vibrant living. Your work has been foundational. I just wanted to thank you."

His uncertainty melted into a smile. We talked briefly about The Luminist and the book. "Keep up the good work!" he said as we parted ways.

I practically floated out of Penn Station. Lost car key? What lost car key?

Maybe the universe was saying sorry for the morning's chaos. Maybe this whole ridiculous day happened just so I could bump into the researcher whose ideas shaped my approach to everything. Or maybe I was being reminded that a mistake doesn’t have to ruin anything, not even an afternoon.

I smiled as I played back how it had happened. If any piece of the last two hours had gone differently — the pity party, Kendall’s pep talk, the processing stomp, and then the surrendered stroll here — I would have missed Dr Bonanno completely.

And just like that, my carelessness became a happy mistake.

Epilogue.

Six weeks later, Kendall was right — I'd almost forgotten about the whole thing. I had been so busy with book revisions, I hadn’t replaced the lost key yet. Instead, I treated the spare like an heirloom and trained myself to religiously zip close my bag.

But one afternoon, while my nose was buried in my iPad, my phone started buzzing.

It was a 212 area code. Who the hell from New York was calling me? I let it go to voicemail. Then it rang again. And again.

On the fourth ring, I was ready to give that telemarketer a piece of my mind. "HELLO?"

"Is this Susan? This is Roy from Amtrak. I found your car key."

"You have to be f#%ing kidding me!"

"No need to swear, ma'am," Roy replied with a chuckle.

"Oh! Sorry Roy!" I laughed. "I just can't believe it. After all this time?"

"Those things are expensive. I wanted to get it back to you."

I know most mistakes don’t work out this way. That some losses don’t come with miraculous endings.

But how many small graces do we miss because we're too busy calling ourselves idiots to notice the tall man with the black backpack.

Too cranky to pause and see the beauty in our daughter consoling us.

Too sure life is out to get us to pick up the phone?

To seeing beyond the screw-up,

Sue

> Subscribe to have the Luminist delivered to your inbox every Saturday, in both written and audio format, at theluminist.substack.com.

As I stood in the 200-year-old vaulted glass train station, eyes scanning the departure board, a voice cut through the crowd: "Sue?" Who the hell knows me at London Paddington?

I looked around until I spotted a familiar face… Lisa! I recognized her blonde hair and unguarded smile from the bios I’d just been studying. She was one of this year's speakers at Do Wales, the ideas festival I was heading to for the third time — first as a participant, then speaker, now host.

"Want to sit together?" she asked.

We spent the next four hours rolling through English then Welsh countryside, sharing terrible train coffee and easy conversation. By the time we reached the venue — a farm on a tiny road that overlooks the sea — we’d bonded.

Just like that, the Do community was working its magic again.

> Subscribe to have the Luminist delivered to your inbox every Saturday, in both written and audio format, at theluminist.substack.com.

Here's what I don't miss about corporate America: The politics. The PowerPoints. The urgent weekend emails. The meetings about meetings.

But here's what I miss desperately: My work family. That feeling of working toward something bigger than yourself with people who genuinely have your back.

When I left corporate American last January, I figured that was simply the price of my new creative life. Freedom meant going solo. That’s just how it works, right? So I grudgingly made peace with the trade-off.

But since then, I've been looking for chances to be part of something again, even if just for a little bit.

So after speaking last year at the Do Lectures, I’d volunteered to founders David and Clare Hieatt that I’d be happy to help in any way going forward. A few months later, David sent an email: “I think you’d make a great compere.”

I had to look that word up in the dictionary. But once I did, I said yes.

So this year at the Do, I MC’d. I introduced speakers, asked questions, and connected dots for the audience, while also exposing them to silly American phrases like, “peace-out girl scout”. (You can take the girl out of Virginia, but you can’t take Virginia out of the girl.)

At first, I was nervous, feeling out of my wheelhouse. I’ve never been an MC or a compere or whatever the hell we want to call it. But after facilitating the first two speakers, I had a 'hold on, this feels familiar' moment. This was eerily similar to what I used to do as a senior exec: take in information from different teams, then ask questions to expand understanding on all sides.

With that realization, I settled into my role. Which really means that I stopped thinking about how well I was doing, and made it about the speakers instead.

When I was giving a talk in 2024, much of my energy had been directed inward — staying focused, getting my message right, not screwing up my one shot. MCing was the complete opposite. I poured my energy outward. I became part of a choreographed dance, designed from sunrise to long after sun down, with one focus: make this long weekend memorable, inspiring, and generative for everyone involved.

And I got to do it as part of a team! Christian mic-ing me up each morning with a grin. Lia orchestrating everything with calm precision. Alex capturing moments on his camera between our daily hugs.

After a long day of intros and Q&A, Paul — whose job on paper is managing slides and timing, but who's really the Chief Encourager for the speakers, putting them at ease with his chill vibe and sparkly smile — pulled me aside. "You're doing brilliantly, Sue. Really hitting the mark."

The full realization didn't hit until days later, decompressing back in London in a Piccadilly Circus bookstore before my flight home. My brother-in-law Richie texted to check in about the weekend. As I started typing my response, the words just tumbled out:

Wow, I feel part of a work family again.

There it was. The thing I thought I'd lost forever when I walked away from corporate America had found me on a 300-year-old farm on a bluff, overlooking the Northeast Atlantic.

I keep writing about how life fills empty spaces in ways we never expect (like here and here)… but apparently I’m still learning to trust life’s capacity to fill every void, no matter how niche.

I truly, naively believed a work family couldn't fit into my new creative vagabond life. It was too different, too individual, too... not corporate.

But belonging and shared purpose? Those aren't corporate perks. They're human needs. They're a part of our evolutionary impulse to band together, building something that helps us live better than we ever could alone. Which means they can show up anywhere, within any group of people crazy enough to try.

Back in the fold,

Sue

P.S. Do Wales is taking a fallow year in 2026, but if life-changing experiences interest you, register for 2027. Fair warning: you might also end up taking a plane, train, and then taxi to Cardigan Bay… over and over.

> Subscribe to have the Luminist delivered to your inbox every Saturday, in both written and audio format, at theluminist.substack.com.

"If they don't have an almond croissant, I'll take a cheese danish." Cary's voice crackled through my phone as I stood in the rain outside Flour & Salt, the locals’ favorite cafe and bakery in Hamilton, NY.

"I don't take orders, Cary, from you or anyone else," I shot back, but I was grinning.

The night before, I'd volunteered to pick up pastries for our five-person workshop group on the last day of the Colgate Writer's Conference. When Cary had tried to put his request then, I'd shut him down: I'd show up with a nice box of good stuff, and he could choose from whatever I brought. No special orders.

But here he was, seventy-five years old with the persistence of a toddler, giving me detailed instructions while I was literally standing in line in the rain. And, a cheese danish? At this artisan bakery in a quaint college town? That’s what he might have ordered last week walking to his local bakery in the Bronx, but there wasn’t a cheese danish in sight. Classic Cary — equal parts stubborn and ridiculous.

But Cary wasn’t really trying to get what he wanted. He was trying to make me laugh.

Mission accomplished.

> Subscribe to have the Luminist delivered to your inbox every Saturday, in both written and audio format, at theluminist.substack.com.

Worlds Collide

When I first met Cary six days earlier, I was sure we'd spend the week politely workshopping each other’s chapters, and nothing more.

Cary’s project was titled Dreamin’ and Schemin’: Ideas and Inspiration from Five Decades of Community-Building. He’d spent most of his life in the South Bronx as a teacher, nonprofit executive, and community organizer — inventing the Senior Olympics, challenging the Yankees to pay property taxes, getting President Carter to visit families with worms crawling out of their faucets.

And there I was, lifetime capitalist, sitting across from a guy who’s dedicated his life to fighting people just like me.

While he was community organizing and picketing, I'd spent thirty years climbing corporate ladders, closing deals, and maximizing shareholder value. I’ve never organized anything more rebellious than a women’s leadership summit.

Based on our LinkedIn profiles (which Cary definitely doesn’t have), you’d think we would have given each other a wide berth.

Instead, I was charmed to bits by this ornery old man.

Cary quoted Jackie Onassis and hip-hop pioneer Melle Mel with equal reverence. He's worked with everyone from Pete Seeger to Keith Haring to Arthur Ashe. When faced with impossible problems, he doesn't organize protests, he organizes parades. His solution to urban blight? Walking billboards and break dancing competitions.

Every conversation revealed another layer. The academic who became a "streetwise Ph.D." The organizer who believes in joy as much as justice. The guy who figured out how to make positive change without venomous confrontation, just imagination and commitment.

By the final day, Cary had completely rewritten my understanding of how change happens.

I’ve always understood advocacy through the lens of corporate influence and strategic partnerships. Now I also saw how it could be neighborhood block parties and children’s world fairs. Teaching at a school with bullet holes in the chalkboard. Getting a president’s attention not with political connections but with pure moral clarity and good-natured harassment.

Sitting in those workshop sessions, I wasn't just learning new things. I was having the time of my life.

And as someone who has made vibrant living my mission and my message, it’s a big deal to stumble upon this aliveness gold mine, simply by sitting next to a couldn’t-be-more-different-than-me stranger who slowly becomes a friend.

The Missing Ingredient

I spent the six hour drive home from Colgate wondering why Cary had such an impact on me. Then I remembered an article my friend shared on the work of Professor Lorraine Besser.

Most of us think a “good life” comes from happiness and meaning. But Besser discovered a third ingredient we're missing: psychological richness. Experiences that are novel, complex, perspective-changing. Aka, interesting.

It sounds relatively intuitive — new experiences make life more unpredictable, more exciting, and more fun. Variety is after all the spice of life. However, we unwittingly reduce the possibility of being surprised as we get older. We don’t mean to, our lives are just already full to bursting. We know what we like, what works for us, what will consistently boost our mood. So we burrow deeper and deeper into our comfort zones, unconsciously avoiding realms where we can be challenged, stretched, and expanded.

But, I thought I had avoided this trap. I seek novelty everywhere — travel, books, art exhibits, idea festivals in Wales. However, clearly my social world had gotten comfortable. Safe, even.

The people I spend time with generally think like me. Live like me. See the world like me.

But then Cary showed up, with his flip phone, his AOL email address, and his t-shirts from obscure outdoor music festivals in the Adirondacks.

And I was reminded that there's a kind of vibrancy that only lives beyond our favorite, comfortable things. The kind where you can’t predict what's around the corner. Where you don’t know if you’re going to like what comes next, because you’ve never experienced anything like it. Where afterwards even your familiar favorites feel different because you’ve been through something new.

Bonus: It beats learning life lessons through loss, which is how I've picked up most of my wisdom. This time my perspective got expanded in the most delightful way possible.

Just A Dash

Admittedly I don't need an ornery seventy-five-year-old pestering me about pastries every day of my freaking life.

But every once in a while? When someone I've come to adore tries to boss me around from a mile away while I'm standing in the rain? When his ridiculous request makes me giggle despite myself?

I’ll take it. The absurdity, the exasperating persistence, the “is this really happening?” enriches my life through the power of sheer silliness. And those opportunities don’t show up every day.

But it’s more than that for me. I’ll remember Cary — and that moment — for the rest of my life. Not because I was so happy, so inspired, or so proud. I’ll remember it because making a friend who is generationally, geographically, politically, and technologically different from me… surprised me.

He made me laugh and he made me think.

Fear not, I’m still a late-stage capitalist to my core. But making this interesting friend did exactly what Professor Besser said it would. It changed my perspective. It got me out of my comfort zone. It gave me some ideas.

And all those things add up to one thing: a rich life.

Pleasantly surprised,

Sue> Subscribe to have the Luminist delivered to your inbox every Saturday, in both written and audio format, at theluminist.substack.com.

"Guess where I am!" I texted my son Connor the picture of myself with a heart emoji. He was headed to bed halfway around the world, exhausted after fourteen hours in seat 46L before finally landing in Tokyo.

"FRANK!" He shot back, complete with crying-laughing emoji.

Frank Dining Hall. Colgate University's version of the college cafeteria that makes you question how they're charging highway robbery tuition for penal institution level food. I stared down at my tater tots. They looked back at me with equal disappointment.

"The food IS absolutely terrible here!" I replied.

"It always is! But I'm eating good out here in Tokyo! Enjoy Colgate, mom!"

Three weeks after Connor's rain-soaked graduation, here I am again. Tater tots abandoned, I drive back to the cute-as-a button cottage I've rented ten times over the last four years. The rough hewn work table is strewn with workshop pdfs, craft talk notes, and classmate manuscripts from the Colgate Writers Conference I’m currently attending. But I ignore the piles, drop my tote bag on the floor, and return to the rocking chair on the porch to watch the twilight fade. The trees are thick and green, cicadas are humming their summer symphony, and I'm wondering how a place I never chose became so perfectly mine.

> Subscribe to have the Luminist delivered to your inbox every Saturday, in both written and audio format, at theluminist.substack.com.

Hitchhiking on Someone Else's Dream

Back in 2020, a college counselor put Colgate on Connor’s “to explore” list. Neither of us had ever heard of it. We visited on a February day so cold even this Pennsylvania girl questioned whether humans were meant to live this far north. He liked what he saw and he applied. He got in. But he’d also gotten into William & Mary, his dad’s alma mater… And yet, after one more visit, Connor said Colgate felt like “his place”. So I said, “whatever you want, honey” and sent in the tuition.

My first impression of Colgate? It was fine. I was happy Connor liked it. I was doubly happy I could drive up from Virginia in an afternoon. But Colgate didn’t make me swoon. It mostly made me grateful I lived farther south.

But here's the thing about places you don't choose: if you lean in, they can surprise you.

First, I found the postage-stamp sized bar with the decent wine and comfy vibe. Then I found a walking route through neighborhoods with front porches that belong on postcards. Next, the startlingly named Price Chopper grocery store that somehow carried everything I needed. Finally, the cross-country trail through the woods where I could think without interruption.

Trip after trip, year after year, I built my own relationship with Colgate and the surrounding town of Hamilton. So when an email about a writers conference on campus landed in my inbox, I didn't hesitate. Not because I'd fallen in love with Connor's school, but because I'd fallen in love with what I'd carved out there.

That's the secret about unchosen circumstances. You can't control what lands in your lap, but you can absolutely control what you do with it.

Unfortunately, I’ve become an expert at this.

What I’m Not Supposed to Say

Eight and a half years ago, I got handed a life I never would have ordered. Single parenthood. Solo decision-making. Holidays that felt slightly lopsided no matter how hard I tried. If someone had told me in 2016 that I'd not only survive Mike's death but actually cherish parts of the life that came after, I'd have suggested they check themselves into the funny farm.

Yet here we are.

I've discovered things I love about my widowed life that feel taboo to admit.

Like how I can decide last-minute to go on a trip, no negotiating the dates, the activities, whether we get burgers or sushi. How Connor and I developed this shorthand that comes from being a two-person team. How I get to be entirely myself in my house — no compromising on the thermostat or the volume of my music or whether we watch another episode.

I remember maybe two years after Mike died, I caught myself humming while organizing a closet. Just, you know… happy. Happy in the life I had come to have.

The guilt hit like a brick wall. Should I be this content? This... unbroken?

I’ve struggled with that worry on and off since. It comes up many times when I write a post for you, dear reader. “Will they think I’m a monster for admitting I love this life? Should I show more grief, more regret?”

But Colgate is showing me how ridiculous that guilt is. I can love this upstate campus without diminishing any other place I've been happy. I can appreciate my favorite trail here while still missing other paths I've taken.

Loving different versions of your life works the same way.

I never chose to support Connor through college applications alone. But I discovered I'm pretty good at it. No committee meetings in my kitchen. No lengthy discussions about pros and cons. Just my gut, Connor's instincts, and a willingness to trust both.

I never chose to travel by myself. But now I get to visit museums for exactly as long — or as short — as I want. I get to pick whatever play tickles my fancy, and leave halfway through when it’s a dud. I get to spend time deep in dedicated conversation with my far off friends in their towns.

I never chose to become Connor’s only parent. But wow, texting each other inside jokes as he travels through Japan is priceless; I love the bond that we have now.

And I can love this life, and still love Mike.

What We Do With What We Get

The truth is, most of our lives are built on circumstances we didn't choose. The family we're born into. The economy we graduate into. The health we inherit. The losses that reshape everything.

We spend so much energy wishing things were different instead of discovering what's possible within what is.

I'm still learning this. Still sometimes catching myself humming in closets and wondering if I should feel guilty. Still amazed that a campus in the middle of nowhere New York became one of my favorite places on earth.

But I'm getting better at trusting the process. At finding my walking trail, my dive bar, my cottage with a view of the forest. At building something beautiful out of whatever each day hands me.

The tater tots are still terrible. But the view from this porch?

Perfect.

Making the most of it,

Sue

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"Wait, but you are SUE DEAGLE!" It was Day 10 at my kitchen table. Books were everywhere, sticky notes were breeding like rabbits, chargers were staging their daily escape from the outlets, the couch pillow I used to support my finicky lower back had come to resemble a smooshed bagel. My "command center", as the kids had dubbed it, was making me feel less in control, more out of my mind.

That’s when Kendall found me slumped over my laptop.

"Mom, why are you so mopey? You got this!"

Book revisions, that’s why. The thing that was supposed to be my passion project, my victory lap, my pain-into-purpose magnum opus after leaving corporate America had turned into my hell.

> Subscribe to have the Luminist delivered to your inbox every Saturday, in both written and audio format, at theluminist.substack.com.

Apparently knowing how to write newsletters doesn't automatically mean you’ll know how to write books. Who knew? Probably everyone. Except me.

It's been 136 weeks since I started The Luminist. But this last week felt exactly like those early days when I'd spend 20 hours crafting a post, hand it to Leona, and she'd gently explain that... it just wasn't working. I had dared to dream those days were behind me.

How cute.

A book, it turns out, has a few more requirements than a blog post. With Do Loss, I’m trying to fit the vibe of the Do Book Company publishing house. It’s a little story, a little how-to — structures I know and love — but all that needs to pack neatly into a framework, while also interspersed with exercises that drive the points home. Sections need to link, flow, amplify, and, oh, that pesky detail, not repeat what’s already been said ten times. There’s no space for baby pictures or travel selfies or cheeky GIFs to lighten the mood. I keep writing like I'm delivering quarterly projections when what I need is my talking-to-a-friend-over-coffee voice. I can’t just sit down, follow my curiosity, and bang out a chapter like I do a TL post.

So once again, I find myself a beginner. I’ve written about this borderline horrifying experience before (here and here), but honestly, I find beginner-hood so frustrating, I need to write about it again. (Maybe it’s for you, maybe it’s for me. Either way, it’s happening.)

I think of myself as someone pretty well-versed in struggle. But the struggle of loss and the struggle of being a total newbie are two completely different things.

With loss, we all know it's going to suck. It’s arguably the defining characteristic of loss. But with new pursuits, I personally expect them to be challenging, yes, but also fulfilling, exciting, expanding. But then I got body-slammed by my own ignorance into a spiral of “Is this any good? How am I supposed to make it better? Ugh, I’m so lost. What am I even doing…”

But this I do know: the challenges in life are far more rewarding than the victory laps.

If nothing else, they provide a dark background against which the gold in our life can glitter and shine. And generally, they provide much more.

This week has given me a chance to revel in the support of those who love me. Every time I share my feeeeeeelings, I am beyond supported. It’s humbling in that way that makes one wonder, how did I get this lucky, to have these humans in my life?

* Karl didn’t try to fix, he just offered a glimpse of the future I’m working for: “Someday you’ll be on the Today Show talking about this stuff.”

* Kavon listened to me vent then turned my tirade into a universal truth, “Even the best go through this process.”

* Alice didn’t miss a beat before offering “I see you, I feel you” and assurance we can make it through.

* Connor played the hits: “You got this, ma!”

* Kendall went straight for the heart. There’s nothing like a “but you are SUE DEAGLE” to remind you where you’ve been, what you’ve overcome, and what you are capable of. Here. Now. Always.

I’ve also realized how much I love writing The Luminist. Not too long ago, writing it felt like trying to ride a unicycle, but now it’s where I easily drop into my rhythm and flow. Compared to Do Loss, it feels like freedom (whatever topic I choose), space (no word counts), companionship (collaborating with Leona), and play (the silliest gifs). This book will come to an end, and it will turn out great. But TL is my ride-or-die.

Finally, this week has brought all my coping mechanisms back to the surface. ‘Oh right, this is my bread and butter.’ These are the moments when I get to practice what I preach: meeting the messiness of life and make something beautiful out of it. The cover of Do Loss is a gritty, chaotic rainbow — just like me. It’s unexpected and a bit all over the place, but it’s vibrant and sure as hell making it to the other side.

The day after Kendall's reminder, I abandoned my crumbling command center. Rather than stare at my laptop for another useless hour, I went swimming.

But not my usual serious laps. Instead, I just played. I leaped off the side and plunged to the twelve-foot pool bottom. I swam on my back five feet below, watching my bubbles break the surface. I did my best dolphin impression, while the real swimmers counted their laps in the adjacent lanes.

I was 56 years old acting like a kid at summer camp.

Zero shame.

That's when I remembered: I’m still SUE DEAGLE even when I’m struggling.

In fact, that’s what forms me, shapes me, makes me more me than anything else. That ride, on that gritty rainbow, to the other side.

Soaked but finally smiling,

Sue

> Subscribe to have the Luminist delivered to your inbox every Saturday, in both written and audio format, at theluminist.substack.com.

The rectangle was supposed to keep me safe… It was the Spring of 1985, junior year sociology class. Mr. Perry passed out a worksheet with one instruction: “Draw yourself 20 years from now.”

I set to work with the focused intensity of someone whose drawing skills peaked in cave paintings. One neat stick figure (me), one house, two tiny stick kids, one tall stick husband. Mountains. Sun. All perfectly contained within the sheet’s pre-printed, bold-lined rectangle, like a good little future should be.

“Time's up! Share with your neighbor.”

I glanced at my best friend Cara's paper and nearly hyperventilated. Her future was everywhere — stick figures and squiggly lines and God knows what else spilling off the edges, climbing the margins, absolutely refusing to be contained.

She was drawing outside the lines.

Wait, what? My Presbyterian soul recoiled. Isn’t that rectangle there for a purpose? Aren’t we supposed to stay within the lines?

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Then Mr. Perry asked the question that I dreaded…

“So how many of you kept your rendering within the confines of the rectangle?”

Me and a few other suckers raised our hands. He explained that drawing inside the lines shows that your imagination of the future has limits, and we could benefit from both literally and figuratively thinking outside the box. But I wasn’t buying that my instinct to contain and constrain was a bad thing. Cara’s boundary breaking abundance — her future life messily, dangerously filling the page — made me itchy and uncomfortable. Lines existed for a reason: to shield you, protect you, and most importantly, to guarantee the right outcome.

Cara was crossing those lines at her own peril.

My Ride-or-Die: Rigidity

Turns out that rectangle panic wasn't just teenage anxiety — it was my entire life strategy.

I spent the next 30 years as a line absolutist. I worshipped at the altar of doing things “right” so everything would turned out “right”. I actively hunted down structures with detailed instructions, printed out rule books in triplicate, highlighted the s**t out of them, then executed them down to the last footnoted, single-spaced, microscopic instruction.

I took the first job offered out of college without considering if I actually liked it. Parlayed that into business school, then a better job, then a better job, then a better job. Met my Prince Charming and married him on schedule. Defined myself by my carefully managed everything — work success, polished appearance, Ironman finishes.

But rather than feeling constrained, this steel-rod approach made me feel invincible.

Certainty was my security blanket. I wrapped myself in it daily, convinced that if I just knew enough, planned enough, controlled enough, I could prevent the unexpected from ever darkening my perfectly rectangular door.

Then… my rule-following, healthy-eating, exercise-obsessed, doctor-visiting Prince Charming dropped dead.

Of a heart attack.

At age 50.

All that line obeying, all that instruction following, all that meticulous executing of the equation “control = safety” turned out to be complete and utter b******t. I was following every rule book every written, but none of them warned of this outcome. None of them even hinted that things would go even a little wrong, let alone this wrong.

Now I was facing a murky future without the love of my life, clutching a stack of useless rule books whose only remaining purpose was kindling for the bonfire where my perfectly planned life used to be.

Trading Fake Surety for Real Uncertainty (aka Life)

So I let those rule books burn. What had they gotten me anyway? As far as I could tell, a rigged game where I did all the work and life still got to sucker-punch me.

This realization crashed my brain's operating system. It was Y2K, but in my own head. Every prediction model I'd built about how life works — work hard, follow rules, get predictable outcomes — got wiped clean.

But here's the weird thing: that total system failure turned out to be less of a breakdown and more of a breakthrough.

A breakthrough into openness, into endless possibility, into mystery, and into delight.

According to neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett, we're basically walking prediction machines, constantly forecasting what's about to happen based on past experiences. But when those foundational experiences get nuked by, say, a profound and unexpected loss? Your brain suddenly gets a lot more creative about what might be possible.

As Barrett puts it, “Everything you learn today seeds your brain to predict differently tomorrow.”

So the blast zone where my life used to be understandably resulted in some new ways of thinking:

* All those rigid beliefs about how life “should” work suddenly felt flimsy. I didn’t have to try to think outside the box. The box now just looked like a joke.

* My thinking became very… flexible. It’s almost as if I could feel my neurons rewiring. I don’t have science to back this up, but I wouldn’t be surprised if neuroplasticity spikes after major life disruptions.

* I wasn’t locked into my old reactions. Instead of defaulting to fear-based interpretations, I got to consciously pick new “action plans” for how to meet and respond to uncertainty.

* Possibility became my go-to assumption. Without my old certainties clogging up the works, I could imagine entirely new futures.

The result? I traded fake surety for true uncertainty — and discovered that while uncertainty doesn't guarantee rainbows and unicorns, it does guarantee the chance to be surprised and even delighted by the world in ways my former rigid self could never have experienced.

Breakthrough Without the Breakdown

So, do we have to wait for life to demolish us to access this kind of transformation?

Hell no.

While my awakening came courtesy of devastating loss, I've watched friends courageously and intentionally step beyond their own rectangles — leaving behind their comfort zones, questioning beliefs they'd never examined, choosing uncertainty over false security.

The friend who quit his soul-crushing consulting gig to become a coach (and makes less money while being more happy). The couple who sold everything to travel the world (and discovered they needed way less stuff to feel way more alive). The woman who finally left the relationship that was slowly suffocating her spirit (and found herself again in the process).

They didn't wait for catastrophe to force their hand. They chose to bend before life made them break.

The key seems to be willingness — willingness to release our grip on the illusion of control, to question what we think we know, to experiment with being someone slightly different than who we’ve always been.

As Barrett’s research shows, our brains are constantly learning and adapting. We just have to give them permission to predict differently.

There Never Was a Rectangle

If Mr. Perry handed me that same worksheet today, I'd probably start laughing and draw all over the dang page — pilgrim paths and London streets and treehouses and trips to South America. “Impossible” dreams would spill into the margins; I’d even flip the paper over to add still more life that refuses to be contained.

Because I've learned that the lines we think protect us are often the very things that imprison us. The rectangle isn't safety — it's limitation disguised as security.

Because, let’s be clear: security doesn’t exist.

Just ask Mike, that handsome devil who never ate a single piece of red velvet cake, who never missed a workout, who went to the doc every six months, still had a life-ending heart attack 15 years before retirement.

In other words, life is unpredictable no matter what you do. But only beyond the confines of the rectangle will you realize that it’s also endless in its possibility, full of unexpected delights, and sometimes even flashing you miracles from under it’s skirt.

So I dare you: Step beyond the box. Take up the whole damn page.

Giddy with what you’ll draw there,

Sue

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“Can I touch your baby’s hair?” Two decades ago, I used to wheel a six-month-old Connor through the aisles of Trader Joe’s. His dough-boy hands grasping the cart’s handle, his chubby legs plugged through the metal slats.

And atop his cherub face and bowling ball head was the fluffiest, spikiest hair. When light caught it, he glowed like a candle behind frosted glass.

People couldn't resist.

And who was I to deny them a chance to interact with this child, electrified by life?

“Sure.” I’d reply.

Then they'd reach out, fingers hovering momentarily before touching that downy magic.

What they couldn't see was the ghost image flickering behind him in my mind: tubes snaking from tiny limbs, machines beeping, a sterile incubator instead of a shopping cart.

In the first hours after Connor's birth, the head doctor in the Georgetown NICU brought Mike into her office and sat him down.

"Your baby is gravely ill," she said.

The next ten days was a fog of oscillating ventilators and intravenous medicine. A tangle of tubes around his IV pole that looked like the underside of a computer server.

It was touch and go…

And yet, there he was six months later, making grocery clerks and soccer moms smile in the cereal aisle, all kicking legs and slobbery grins.

No act of imagination during those dark NICU days could have conjured up that fluffy-haired charmer in the Trader Joe's cart.

Just as no vision of the future could have shown me last week's rain-soaked college graduate, diploma in hand, his megawatt smile now framed by a grown man's face.

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Last week, I put the picture of baby bird Connor on the shelf above my stove. So I could drink it in while making my morning tea. So I could remember how far we've come. So I could revel in his past 22 years that almost weren’t.

For me, Connor's graduation isn't just about the boy who lived.

It's about the boy who thrives.

Despite almost dying at birth.

Despite death taking his dad.

Despite the special hell of pandemic high school, the gauntlet of college admissions, and that unavoidable teenage phase where they communicate exclusively in grunts and eye rolls.

He did NOT pirouette through these challenges with a no-problem attitude. There were nights of deep, solitary sorrow, missing his dad. College rejections that had him questioning his worth. Friends who left him hanging.

But also breakthrough moments — the day he realized he could sing beautifully just like Mike, the professor who told him his essay was brilliant, the real friends who became family.

He got the full combo platter of life. And yet, the young man on the commencement stage had bright eyes and a knockout smile.

He glowed.

What struck me during graduation — beyond my disbelief that this towering young man once fit in my arms — is that no matter how hard I tried, I never could have seen all this coming. No one could have: family, friends, teachers. At multiple times throughout his life, it was almost impossible to imagine Connor’s future beyond how absence would surely shape it. What wouldn't happen. What couldn't be. Who wouldn't be there.

Even when we believed in Connor to make it through, we never could have imagined:

An uncle who would step sideways into that dad-shaped hole — helping him fix his car and work through relationship problems; playing ridiculous party games with Connor's friends, giving them silly nicknames; showing up for every milestone with exactly the right mix of celebration and gentle ribbing.

A mother-son relationship forged in adversity's fire and as strong as steel. That we’d bond over shared obsessions with brutalist architecture, fifty-cent vocabulary words, football Sundays, and philosophical discussions about what it takes to become a person you’re proud of.

The frisbee team that would teach him more about leadership than any textbook. The a capella group that transformed my shower-singer into someone who performed fearlessly for crowds.

Professors who would ignite intellectual wildfires no one ever saw coming. Medieval French literature? The history of Irish political movements? The econometric impacts of bycatch in New Zealand's fishing zones. (Don't ask me what that last one means. I just smile and nod.)

Connor standing on that soggy stage, waving as friends, family, and professors cheered him on, felt like a miracle.

But was it? Or is the human brain just bad at giving the human spirit enough credit?

We doubt a boy like Connor — or any kid, really — can survive the devastation of losing a parent.

And this failure of imagination can be wounding.

The stories we tell about our futures, about what’s within reach and what’s a pipe dream, shape our futures. So if you want to move toward a brighter future, you have to be able to imagine that brighter future. Otherwise, why bother even trying to take a step in that direction? Our imaginations give us a reason to fight when it would be easier to stay hidden under the covers. This is Visualization 101.

However, imagination is only half the battle. Because no matter how out there we dream, we will never be able to keep up with how miraculous reality can be. We will always be too narrow-minded with what we believe is possible. (Believe me. My dreams for my family once looked nonsensical to the outside world… And today our lives are even better than we could have hoped for.)

So, after imagination fuels us into action, the second requisite is that we stay open.

Open to all the endless possibilities…

My NICU baby became a baby chick. My baby chick became a sweet, gangly little boy. My little boy became a locked-down, moody teenager without a dad… and then, in what felt like a blink, he became a summa-cum-laude, captain-of-the-ultimate-team, WWII-trivia-whiz-kid college grad. Not because he or I or anyone else imagined it into being, but because it unfolded day-by-day. Because Connor let himself be surprised, intrigued, diverted, and engaged. He said “yes” to the things that felt right, even when they didn’t make sense or follow The Plan. He let his Uncle Richie in, he trusted his professor when she suggested he double major in French, he sang his heart out and accidentally made great friends.

He showed up with openness. Life did the rest.

This is the deal with loss — it makes liars of your predictions and fools of your plans. It robs you of certainty.

But that’s just the beginning of the story.

The pain gives way to life that grows around it — not replacing what was lost, but incorporating it into something new and unexpectedly beautiful.

There is a future after loss. We can't picture its contours. We can only say yes to what feels right in the moment and trust that these small yeses add up to something we never could have seen coming.

That someday, we might even glow.

To endless possibilities,

Sue

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On a Friday night in early May, I was collapsed on the Treehouse sectional next to Kendall, both of us wiped from our whirlwind trip to New York City. It wasn’t a book thing this time. It was a board thing — my first fundraising gala with Experience Camps for Grieving Kids, whose board I've just joined.

We scrolled through Netflix mumbling 'seen it,' 'too depressing,' and 'maybe later' until we finally landed on the final episode of "Chef's Table: Legends" featuring Alice Waters. I expected beautiful food shots and maybe a mild existential crisis about my own cooking skills. What I didn't expect was a lightning bolt of clarity about grief work.

Waters didn't just open her groundbreaking restaurant Chez Panisse and found the Edible Schoolyard Project. She launched a revolution. Americans had developed a toxic relationship with food — all TV dinners and Tang, completely disconnected from farms, seasons, and nutrition. She saw a culture that had forgotten how to eat.

As the episode explored more and more of Waters’ philosophy and strategy, my exhausted brain started connecting fuzzy dots. Something about this story felt frustratingly familiar…

Duh, Deagle!

Our culture has an equally broken relationship with grief.

We have no roadmap for navigating loss, no education, and certainly no vocabulary beyond "sorry for your loss" and "let me know if you need anything." This isn't a personal failing — it's a cultural one.

Both Waters and Experience Camps operate on a fundamental truth: to heal a broken relationship — whether with food or grief — you need more than information pamphlets and well-meaning advice. You need transformation. You need immersive experiences that show a better way is possible.

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What I thought would be a relaxing zone-out turned into me incessantly pausing the show to scribble notes. Because Alice Waters is a culture-shifting genius.

She didn't start with children. She began by changing how adults thought about food — one meal, one restaurant, one farm relationship at a time. She had to change the cultural conversation among those who controlled the food systems before she could reach children.

Boom. The same holds true for grief. We can't possibly teach children healthy ways to navigate loss if we adults are still fumbling through our own pain, hiding our tears in bathroom stalls and changing the subject when someone mentions the person who died. We can't give what we don't have.

That's why I spend most of my time talking to adults about loss. That's what The Luminist is about, and what my book Do Loss (coming February 2026) will address. Before we can help kids, we need to convince adults that awkward silences and permanent brokenness aren't inevitable after loss. There are better ways forward — ways that honor both the depth of our pain and our capacity to laugh again someday.

Once the adult food revolution gained momentum, Waters recognized that children needed their own version — what became the Edible Schoolyard Project. She understood that early education could prevent the disconnection that was plaguing adults. Children needed to plant, grow, harvest, and cook food themselves to develop a healthy relationship with it from the start.

Experience Camps operates on a similar principle. Children who have lost a parent, sibling, or primary caregiver need more than what our regular education system provides. They need an immersive experience that combines the joy of summer camp with the wisdom of grief-informed community. (Many of the volunteer counselors have experienced their own personal tragedies, and some were campers themselves.)

Thanks to these communal experiences, kids discover they aren't the only ones whose dad had a heart attack or whose mom died of cancer.

They learn it's possible to grieve and honor and miss their person while still dominating the dodgeball court.

Through sharing circles and bunk conversations, they develop words for feelings that might otherwise stay bottled inside.

And most importantly, they experience what healthy grief navigation looks like — something many of their families and communities simply don't know how to provide.

The farm-to-table movement Waters sparked has grown far beyond Chez Panisse. Today, farmers' markets appear in suburban parking lots, organic has gone mainstream, and school garden programs exist across the country. What was once revolutionary now feels normal.

That's the vision for Experience Camps too. What if navigating grief became something we all learned to do? What if schools had grief-informed counselors? What if communities knew how to rally around bereaved families with more than just a week of casseroles? (Though let's be clear, those casseroles are clutch in the early days.)

The ripple effects, quite simply, would be enormous.

Children who learn healthy grief navigation become teens who can support grieving friends, adults who can show up authentically during crisis, and elders who aren't paralyzed by accumulated losses. Communities would become places where hard conversations happen with skill rather than awkward avoidance.

At their core, both Waters' work and Experience Camps require the same foundational courage: the willingness to look at an entrenched cultural pattern and say, "This isn't working. We can do better."

But here's what really makes both approaches revolutionary: They don't just criticize the status quo. They create vibrant alternatives that demonstrate a better way.

Waters didn't just write manifestos against processed food; she created mouth-watering meals from recognizable ingredients that made people say “I didn’t know a sweet potato could taste that good!” Experience Camps doesn't just lament our grief-avoidant culture; it creates transformative experiences where children discover they can carry both grief and joy simultaneously — often while making chaotic arts and crafts projects that their caregivers will treasure forever.

In case you’re not already galvanized, here are some numbers I’ve learned since joining the board of Experience Camps: Most children receive absolutely no guidance on navigating loss, despite the fact that six million children in the U.S. will experience the death of a parent or sibling by age 18.

Experience Camps currently serves over 1,200 children annually — an epic achievement, but a fraction of the need.

Just as Waters' vision took decades to transform American food culture, reshaping how we approach grief will take time. But we have to plant those seeds now, one camper, one counselor, one volunteer at a time.

My hope is that someday, we'll look back and wonder how we ever lived in a culture that left people so alone in their grief.

After all, just as we all must eat, we all will experience loss.

Learning to navigate it well isn't a luxury, it's essential nourishment for the human journey.

Done letting people starve,

Sue

P.S.

If you know a child or caregiver who would benefit from Experience Camps, you can find more info here: https://experiencecamps.org/our-programs

If you would like to donate to this incredible cause, please do so here: https://give.experiencecamps.org/campaign/689326/donate

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"Please answer this question at your leisure: how do you think you'd do in an apocalypse?" I was in the midst of an asynchronous text convo with Alice, one ocean and six times zones away, and I swear, my question had a point.

Apocalypse stories might sound like silly hypotheticals, but I believe they use catastrophe to illuminate the human spirit; they strip away everything except our core capacity to survive radical change. Would we crumble? Find a way forward? Thrive despite impossible circumstances?

In other words: just how "resilient" are we?

That word — resilience — has been bothering me lately. It shows up everywhere: in corporate seminars, wellness podcasts, coffee conversations with friends. We've turned it into the gold standard for handling life's hardships, but I'm not sure it's doing us any favors.

When someone remarks, "She's so resilient," what are they really saying? That this person bounced back quickly? That they haven't shown their struggle? That they've kept functioning despite their pain? Our cultural definition has flattened the journey through loss into a single dimension with a single destination — getting over it and moving on as quickly as possible.

I was in the grocery store a few months after Mike died when a neighbor approached. "You're doing so well," she said, squeezing my arm, as if pushing a shopping cart filled with frozen pizzas and chicken nuggets was proof that everything was a-okay. Evidently my puffy eyes and dazed expression hadn't caught her attention. She gave me a giant check mark in the 'resilient' box and moved on to produce.

She thought I was proceeding with normal life. I thought I was keeping my kids from starving... with exclusively microwavable meals.

But in her eyes, there was no difference. I was doing the thing, I was moving forward, I was resilient, and I would be fine.

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To be clear, I’m not talking about the Brené Brown understanding of resilience — embracing vulnerability, connection, and emotional awareness. If we all adopted that definition, this post would be very different. But let’s be real, when we colloquially use the term resilience, we generally mean the capacity to pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and get on with it without too much fuss.

Our cultural obsession with this version of resilience creates several significant problems.

First, it oversimplifies the messy, non-linear journey of healing. Real recovery rarely follows a clean trajectory. It loops back on itself, progresses in fits and starts, and varies wildly from person to person.

Second, it focuses exclusively on the aftermath while ignoring what was lost. We rush to celebrate recovery without honoring the value and impact of what's gone.

Third, it sets us up for always unhelpful, sometimes harmful comparisons. "That person is handling their grief better than I am" becomes another way we torture ourselves during already difficult times. As if we need another measuring stick to fall short of.

Fourth and finally, it leads us to believe that resilience is something certain people intrinsically have while others don't — a virtue or trait rather than a capacity every human being can access.

I've said it before, and I'm sure I'll say it a zillion times more before I die: experiencing hardship but still going on to live a good life isn't exceptional, it's ordinary.

Research from trauma experts like Dr. George Bonanno consistently shows that the majority of people demonstrate natural recovery after even severe challenges like death, disaster, or violence. This isn't because they possess some rare quality, but because adaptation — learning to first survive and then eventually thrive in our new reality — is our birthright as humans.

I got this word — adaptation — from Dr. Bonanno, and I like it a lot.

Because adaptation is clearly a process, while resilience comes off sounding like a characteristic. And because it's a process, it includes a sense of inevitability: adaptation may take a while, it may get stalled by setbacks, it may need support... but it never stops.

You, me, all of us, have the ability to adapt coded into our DNA.

I watched this dormant capacity kick into gear in my own life as the kids and I emerged from the early days of grief. Initially, we clutched hard to physical things that reminded us of Mike. This included clinging to the house we lived in — the house where Mike died. Plus, "avoid major changes" is Rule #1 in every how-to-grieve book. But after a while, the weight of that house became unbearable. I'd turn a corner expecting to see Mike folding laundry while on a conference call. I'd walk past the gaping maw of his home office and feel the emptiness like a physical blow. The maintenance tasks piled up while my energy drained away.

Eventually the thought clanged through my head, "What am I doing??" So I discussed it with the kids: I'd like to move somewhere new, somewhere smaller, somewhere in the trees. Somewhere that, when you two go off to college, I'll have as my haven. I gave them time to think it through. Kendall was an enthusiastic yes. Connor took his time deciding. But eventually he just said, "Whatever you want, mom." So I moved ahead.

Years later, I'm typing this from our Treehouse, and it's not just my haven, it's all of ours. Watching the Olympics and simultaneously the sunset while splayed out on the couch, bringing friends over to show off our canopy view, licking our wounds in a place that was literally designed to restore us.

This wasn’t pushing through. This wasn’t keeping calm and carrying on. This was throwing out the rule book and adapting.

Dr. Bonanno’s research suggests that our ability to adapt relies on three key elements working together:

First, accurately assessing the situation. Can we see challenges clearly without catastrophizing or minimizing? This helps us respond appropriately rather than wasting energy on phantom threats or being blindsided by unacknowledged dangers.

Second, having multiple ways to respond. Different challenges need different approaches. So building a coping toolbox that would make your granddad proud, full of strategies for all situations, allows us to match our response to what's actually happening.

Third, paying attention to what's working. Sometimes our first attempt at handling a situation falls flat. (Aka staying in our old house.) Can we recognize when an approach isn't helping and try something else? Bonus points if you can do it without self-judgment!

Think of us as seeds, and adaptation as our innate ability to grow.

Every seed naturally contains all the requisite knowledge for how to become a plant. It doesn't need special training or extraordinary qualities. What it needs are the right conditions to flourish. And so no one would blame a seed for not growing in concrete.

From this perspective, asking "Why aren't you resilient enough??" comes across as absurd. Instead, we find ourselves wondering, "What conditions would support your natural capacity to adapt?"

In other words, what you’re doing isn’t working? Ah, that’s not a “you” problem. That’s a method or environment problem. Let’s try something else.

After Mike died, I channeled my anxiety into trying to find the "right" way to grieve. Or at least the fastest. I tried meditation, prayer, a vigorous pilates practice. A few months in, I abandoned them all. Trying to reduce my stress level was causing me more stress. All these attempts to clear my mind resulted in frantically racing thoughts of grocery lists or worse, vivid memories of the ER…

This abandonment could be seen as giving up. But in reality it freed me up to figure out what actually worked.

Eventually, I discovered that walking in nature gave me both movement and mental stimulation that calmed my nervous system. That reading grief memoirs didn't make me sadder, it made me hopeful and filled with ideas to try. That spending time at Middle Eastern military bases with my job gave me the depth of human connection I'd always poo-pooed prior.

The turning point between what some might call "sucking" and "succeeding" at grief came when I threw out that binary. I stopped seeing my earlier attempts as failures and started viewing them as experiments. Each one taught me something — that stillness heightened my anxiety rather than soothing it, that physical exhaustion made me more emotionally vulnerable, that distraction only delayed necessary processing — so I could eventually find what worked.

None of my favorite approaches "cured" my grief — that wasn't the point.

They were simply the unique combination of supports that helped my natural adaptation process unfold in its own way, at its own pace.

With its focus on experimentation and pivoting, adaptation saves us from the absurdity of conventional grief wisdom. Because, no — the same approaches do not work for every person in every situation.

What helps one spouse process their child's health struggles might not help the other. The coping strategy that gets you through a job loss might not work for a break up. Connor’s and Kendall’s go-to coping mechanisms were day and night.

Our bodies and minds are both unique and exceedingly context-sensitive. We respond differently based on the nature of the challenge, our available resources, our past experiences, our current support systems, and countless other factors.

Again, the seed metaphor can help us wrap our heads around this. A seed needs different things in drought versus flood conditions, loamy versus rocky soil. A seedling requires different kinds and quantities of nutrients than a mature tree. There's no universal "right way" to grow, only what works in this specific environment at this specific time.

It’s almost like we humans, and our pesky emotions, are actually a part of nature!

With all that in mind, I think it’s time we radically reframe how we think and talk about getting through hard times:

* From asking why someone is struggling to wondering what conditions would help their natural ability to flourish.

* From believing recovery is binary — either you've got it or you don't — to recognizing everyone has this capacity but might need different supports to access it.

* From comparing recovery timelines to honoring each person's unique journey through difficulty.

* From focusing on individual traits to creating structures, strategies, and contexts that help healing organically unfold.

These shifts aren’t just semantic — they change how we approach ourselves and others during life's toughest moments.

A few days later, I got a voice note back from Alice about the apocalypse question.

"My first thought was, I'd be terrible in an apocalypse! I don’t have what it takes. But after thinking about it for a few days, and looking back at the apocalypses I've had, I realized I've consistently surprised myself. I think I'd be great in an apocalypse."

Of course she would.

What this question really reveals isn't someone's special "resilience gene," but their belief in their capacity to adapt.

Those who believe they'd fare well typically trust their ability to learn, to find community, to solve problems creatively. They trust the seed within them to grow, given even half a chance.

So maybe it's time we retired "resilience" from our vocabulary around loss and challenge. Not because Brené Brown's definition isn't great, but because the way it's most often used has become loaded with comparison, judgment, and oversimplification.

Instead, we might talk about:

* Adaptation: our inherent ability to adjust to changing conditions, not as a fixed trait but as a living process.

* Integration: our capacity to weave painful experiences into our ongoing, ever-changing stories.

* Environment: creating conditions where healing can happen naturally, at its own pace.

The wisdom of making it through struggle and emerging on the other side lives in every one of us.

Our task isn't to acquire it, but to clear the path and nurture the soil, allowing it to emerge.

Believing in your capacity,

Sue

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"I think you can eat regular food tomorrow… if ChatGPT agrees." I was texting Kendall, curled up in her dorm room four states away, just after surviving her first-ever bout of food poisoning — that special hell that reduces grown adults to whimpering puddles wondering why existence must be so cruel.

During the worst of it, we had texted back and forth — me offering practical advice (suck on ice chips to stay hydrated), battle-tested wisdom (bring a ratty blanket into the bathroom so the floor isn't so miserable) and moral support (this is terrible and will be terrible for a bit. Hang in there, I'm here!).

Then during a lull in the action, she texted: "ChatGPT says if I want to try Pepto Bismol, to start with half a dose.”

ChatGPT?

She sent a screenshot of her conversation with the AI, and for a second, I felt a twinge of... Irrelevance? Jealousy? The digital usurpation of my maternal throne?

Isn't your mom supposed to be the font of all wisdom, the remedy dispenser, the advice giver here? Am I being replaced by an AI?

Then I caught myself. What do I actually know about food poisoning? I've survived my own stomach tsunamis a few times, but were my saltines-and-ginger-ale remedies actually medically sound? Or just what my mother told me when I was throwing up in 1986?

I smoothed my ruffled feathers and texted back: "Well let's go with ChatGPT here. There's no way I know as much about this as an AI. We'll rely on GPT for the medical advice and I'll do what I do best: the 'oh my poor baby' part of being your mom."

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This whole episode got me thinking about a book I read recently: Being Wrong by Kathryn Schulz.

Turns out, we humans have an "unstoppable drive to tell stories that make sense of our world." But here's the kicker — we often don't have nearly enough information to build those stories accurately.

Does that stop us?

Not even close. Our egos barrel straight ahead like a monster truck over a speedbump, becoming what scientists call "confabulators": we make stuff up, then convince ourselves it's true.

Back in our cave-dwelling days, this quick theorizing was essential:

* That rustling bush = deadly predator or prey for our breakfast?

* That colorful berry = delicious snack or slow, terrible death?

* That approaching stranger = friend or foe?

This ability to make a snap judgement without nearly enough information apparently kept our ancestors alive well enough that it was passed down to us. The problem is, in our modern lives it causes us to spin elaborate theories based on tiny scraps of information, then treat them as gospel.

Don’t worry, it gets worse. Schulz explains that we do indeed have an inner fact checker who verifies the fantastical tales of our own inner storyteller against our senses and memories. But that fact checker is disproportionately influenced by any initial evidence we encounter. In other words, the first perspective we receive about a situation often becomes our baked-in belief on “how it really is”. Then we become unbudgeable, convinced we're right even when evidence mounts to the contrary.

That’s how I became an instant medical expert the moment my kid got sick. Or how we all became virologists during the pandemic. Or economists during the recession. Or constitutional scholars during election season.

So what can we do about it? Recognize that we will be wrong, regularly. It’s impossible not to be.

Why is it so hard to say "I don't know"?

Why was my knee-jerk reaction to fight a robot that can read the entire internet, rather than graciously cede to its obvious expertise?

Here’s what I’m starting to see: in our western society, we equate knowledge with value, expertise with worth. And so admitting uncertainty feels like admitting defeat. As if not knowing is a personal failing rather than the default human condition.

I see it in myself constantly. When asked for my opinion about a topic I know very little about, I can come up with a point of view in two seconds flat. I think about my kids — though I’ve been through young-adulthood, I have very little understanding of what it’s like to be 20 in 2025, with TikTok and smartphones and photo filters and AI-generated images. But I have plenty of advice to give.

We convince ourselves we know because the opposite, uncertainty, is uncomfortable. Because saying "I don't know" feels like leaving a vacuum others will rush to fill. Because we've built entire identities around being the knowledgeable one, the capable one, the one with answers.

But what if our human superpower isn't knowing everything?

As Kendall lay in bed rehydrating, we FaceTimed. She showed me her AI conversation, including ChatGPT's offer: "Would you like me to help you make a plan for the next 4-6 hours?"

Well, damn. That's actually smart. And far more comprehensive than my scattered advice based on the three times I've been through this myself. (Gatorade! Dry toast! Tylenol for the body aches!)

A few days later, when I mentioned to Kendall that I was feeling bashful letting AI do my mothering for me, she jumped to my defense: "ChatGPT doesn't have the warm and fuzzy," she insisted. "I don't trust it. YOU got the credibility. You've been through it."

And there it is — the real human superpower: connecting through our shared uncertainty, and caring for each other like only living, breathing beings can.

I'm no longer threatened by having an AI in the mix.

I'm grateful for the better information. Let ChatGPT handle what it does so well: organize vast amounts of knowledge. Then I'll do what I do best: consume it, then open my mind and decide what to do (or what to advise Kendall to do) next.

There's wisdom in questioning our theories, gathering better data, and revising our position. There's strength in acknowledging our limitations.

Kendall will still call me first when disaster strikes. Not because I have all the answers. But because I bring something no AI can: the messy, imperfect, deeply human ability to sit in uncertainty, to laugh when things are terrible, to support without being able to fix.

Especially now that we have AI at our fingertips, that connection and camaraderie are worth more than 1,000 ‘right’ answers any day of the week.

To not knowing it all,

Sue

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